Pages

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Hmmm... seems to me I was gonna say something here...

Been doing a lot of waiting recently. Yesterday the former native Chinese speaker and I went to a certain unnamed teahouse (that claims it's the inventor of bubble/pearl milk tea) and waited an hour for my lunch to show up. (The fnCs got hers relatively quickly.) But the guy who delivered my meal apologized all over the place and gave us some coupons for free tea the text time we have a spare afternoon to wait for it.

Then this morning we went to the New! Improved! Mini-story of Foreign Affairs office in Fengyuan to get the address on my Alien Residence Card changed. (You gotta do that within 15 days of moving, or they'll fine you NT$5000.) Used to be you could go to the Foreign Affairs Police in the Fengyuan Police Station, wait a few minutes, get yelled at by the officer because you didn't bring the right documents, and be on your way pretty quickly.

Now you go to the New! Improved! MoFA office across the street--look for the banner that says, "Taiwan for UN--Peace Forever!" (or is it "UN for Taiwan--Peace Forever"?). We waited in the office for close to two hours, got nagged by the officer because we didn't bring the right documents (Can anyone tell me why they insist you bring a 戶籍謄本 instead of a 戶口名簿? Don't you need the latter to get the former?), and were out in a minute and a half.

But at least the fnCs and I had some nice conversations while we waited, so I can't really complain...

3 comments:

Sounds a little like my recent experience in getting (my third ... or fourth?) driver's license in Texas. It was hell. Of course, having an expired passport didn't help me any, but you would think that they would have some kind of record for me given the number of times I've lived in this state. So it was back and forth between the social security administration and the Texas DOT, prove of this, evidence of that.

I dunno if it's easier in all things bureaucratic, but we did get two officially stamped copies of the document we needed from the other agency (the Household Registration Office) within seconds, and for a very cheap price (NT$20 per copy, which comes out to slightly more than the price of a can of Pepsi here).

BTW, I think I sort of found out why they want the 戶籍謄本 ("household registration transcript"??). It has more information than the 戶口名簿 ("household registration certificate"??). (Hmmm... in English they sound so similar. Why are they so different in actuality?)